May Flowers

María Berrío’s May Flowers (2021) is an intimate, bijoux still life redolent of spring meadows and afternoon daydreams. Pale pink peonies spill out from a vase in this delicate, serene composition crafted from layers of Japanese paper, Berrío’s signature material. Although interested in the arts since her childhood in Colombia, it was not until she attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City that she began to experiment with collage. Initially gravitating towards papers decorated with natural motifs, Berrío now uses hand-dyed sheets which she builds up layer by layer to form a woven tapestry. In the works of this period, she frequently depicted women and children alongside blooming trees, creeping vines of bougainvillea, and small vases of pink flowers. Indeed, the lush blossoms of May Flowers are echoed in the contemporaneous works Clouded Infinity and The Combed Thunderclap.

For Berrío, the natural world has long offered salvation, a balm to her lived reality: as a child, she spent weekends at her family’s mountainside farm where she could play and roam freely, developing a devotion to the natural world which underpins much of her practice today. ‘By distancing ourselves mentally, technologically, and materially from nature, we not only fail to see nature’s wonder but also our own place in that wonder,’ Berrío has explained. ‘Even when our species completes its designated passage through the universe, the world will continue to turn, the cycle persisting indomitably. Our place in this wondrous continuum is reason enough for hope’ (M. Berrío quoted in ‘Flowered Songs and Broken Currents,’ exhibition materials, Victoria Miro, accessed on 29 May 2022).